Pat Beverley out 10-14 days with torn muscle

Rockets guard Pat Beverley will be out for at least to 10 to 14 days to begin rehab on a torn muscle in his mid-section. Beverley’s injury, suffered in the first half of the season-opener on Wednesday, returns Jeremy Lin to the starting lineup with Aaron Brooks moving up as the primary backup at point guard.

“I’m taking precautions to make sure I’m 100 percent all right,” Beverley said. “If this was the playoffs, I would play tonight for sure. I’m going to go crazy over here sitting like I’m a coach with a suit on, but I can root my team on and look at the game differently, maybe see some things that I don’t see while I’m out there and try to add to my game when I get back.”

Beverley could be out longer. The team said he would be re-evaluated after the rehab.

Rockets guard James Harden, who struggled on Wednesday and missed Thursday’s practice with a sore back, thought he would be able to play against the Mavericks on Friday.

“I got treatment (Thursday) and this morning,” Harden said. “I feel good. It loosened up a lot. So hopefully I’ll be ready to play tonight. I got some shots up at shootaround and feel pretty good.”

Harden said his sore wrist was “all right, as well.”

“It seems like everything is going wrong,” Harden said, “but you still have to fight through it and find away.”

Lin scored 16 points in 31 minutes off the bench on Wednesday, despite missing time to get three stitches to close a cut on his chin. He sat out part of Thursday’s practice with “bumps and bruises and minor stuff.” He had bruised his right ankle, but called it “little stuff.”

“I’ll still be the same player,” Lin said of his return to the starting lineup. “Obviously, we need Pat and we need Pat to play at a high level for us to be where we want to be. He has to get healthy. Other guys have minor injuries, too. Everybody needs to get healthy.

“Things change so fast. Just keep playing, stay focused on what you’re doing, what you’re supposed to do. For me, we were communicating throughout the whole process. They explained to me what made more sense. At the end of the day, we’re all going to play. I’m going to play, he’s going to play. As long as we play well when we’re out there on the floor, I think our team has a high chance of winning.”

Although they already had three point guards – Lin, Beverley and rookie Isaiah Canaan – under contract, the Rockets signed Brooks with situations like this in mind. When Brooks was the Rockets starter and was hurt in the fifth game of the 2010-11 season, the Rockets had Kyle Lowry ready to take over as the starter, but little depth behind him and struggled badly.

“No one thought it would be this early,” Brooks said. “Pat’s had a great preseason, playing good basketball, earning a starting role. With me, it was being ready sometime in the season to play. With it being now, being a veteran guy, I know what I have to go out there and do.”

Brooks played an average of 12.7 minutes in the preseason and 11 minutes in the opener, but his role will change dramatically.

“I joked around I haven’t played with Dwight (Howard) because I was always on the white (backup) team,” Brooks said. “Getting up and down, I’m getting used to it. Our offense is free-flowing and pretty self-explanatory once you get in the game. You want to pick it up on the defensive end where Patrick left off and be able to supply a little bit of offense as well.”

Brooks was immediately directing traffic when he got in Wednesday’s game, but said that is “just what a point guard has to do.

‘Sitting on the bench, you see what’s going on in the game,” Brooks said. “We weren’t moving enough, passing enough. You try to get us moving, get up and down the court in less than three seconds.”

For all that has changed so quickly, that much of the plan has not.

“It’s sad that he got hurt the first game of the season,” Howard said. “Hopefully, he has a speedy recovery. We’re all behind him. Other guys have to step up now and play big for us.”